Addictive Love
Part I
July 26, 2013
Addiction is never a good thing.
Whatever you are addicted to becomes your master… and you become a slave. Some
addictions are better tolerated, but all can be deadly. As much as I have
talked about my addiction to food, and how I had to change my mindset… and “Eat
to live instead of live to eat”, I have rarely talked about the other addiction
I had to face up close and personal, partly because it wasn’t MY addiction. I
have never been much of a drinker. In fact, I am usually the “designated
driver”, because one drink is enough for me. I do drink more, at times, but
rarely to excess, especially if it is going to make me sick. I hate throwing up
more than I hate anything in the world… and that knowledge keeps me in check,
and has kept me in check for years. I have never seen much point in doing
drugs, not for me or for anyone else. Unfortunately, my partner, my lover, my
better half, my husband, was addicted, first to alcohol and then to drugs, and
only a few months after his 47th birthday, that addiction caused the
massive stroke that ended his life.
His life ended long before that… the
last seven years of his life were pure hell, and although I could see it, I
couldn’t stop it. He had removed me, and our children, from his life, so that
we would not be party to his downward spiral. Although it was a noble gesture,
I will forever wonder if there was something I could have done. He assured me,
many times that there was nothing that I could do. We were friends to the end,
and the only fault I could ever find in him was that he made some bad choices
and had some really bad breaks. That
never stopped me from loving him or him from loving me. As sad as the situation
was, our children survived and thrived because of the support of both parents…
and the self-imposed quarantine of one parent who loved them too much to allow
them to get involved. Addiction is a bitch.
When I think of Ronnie Hill, I will always remember him as my “go-to
guy” in a lot of ways. Last year, for the first time in my life, I had to
purchase a vehicle without Ronnie Hill’s help (I always called him by his first
and last names, before and after we were married… it was a term of endearment.)
I got help from a friend, who was able to help me navigate through the
paperwork and the approach women must use when they visit dealerships, so they
won’t get hoodwinked into buying cars based on the vanity mirrors and the
number of cup holders, but he could not do what Ronnie Hill could do… make me
feel absolutely confident about buying a vehicle. Nobody could do that, except
Ronnie Hill. After November 16, 2004, Ronnie Hill would never be able to do
that for me, or for anyone else. Ronnie Hill was gone.
Anyway, ever since I bought that
first Pontiac Bonneville, only days after I signed my contract with Dinwiddie
County Public Schools, Ronnie Hill was my go-to man when it came to vehicles. I
test-drove it to Jim Whelan Exxon, and Ronnie Hill, who was working as a
mechanic there, listened to it run, opened the hood and watched the movable
parts, closed the hood and told me to buy the car. I did. I trusted him that
much. It ran like a dream, and the only reason I traded it, for a much smaller
car, was that, during the gas crisis, buying gas for the car became more
expensive than the car payments. When I first met him, he had some relationship
things going on in his life, things that would play an integral part in the
rest of his life, and so did I, but we managed to maneuver our way through
those things. After that, he was faced with the comments of his interfering
boss, who assured him that a woman with a college degree and a teaching job
would have no parts of a man like him. Some years… and a couple of cars later,
Ronnie Hill finally got up the nerve to ask me out, and I said I would go out
with him. He wasn’t that bashful… just a bit cautious and it didn’t take long
to find out why.
Ronnie Hill called me every evening
for weeks, and we talked and talked. He never talked much when I saw him, but
he told me all about himself over the phone. He talked so candidly about
himself that I couldn’t help but like and respect him. He wasn’t the kind of
person who lied, and when he did, it never worked for him, so most of the time;
he chose not to do it. He talked about his previous relationship and about
paying child support for his daughter, but not really getting an opportunity to
see her, since her mother was against visitation. I loved the way he spoke
about loving her, and in my dreams, I thought about how good a father he would
be. I was becoming addicted to this man without really even knowing him. I
asked him if my weight bothered him, and he told me that, if it had, he
wouldn’t have asked me out. Ronnie Hill couldn’t have cared less about how much
I weighed. He liked me for me. He talked about not having finished high school,
and asked if that bothered me, but he knew it didn’t. He was one of the most
intelligent people I had ever met, even though he thought I was joking when I
told him that. He had learned what many college graduates had never learned… he
knew the language of people. If he felt awkward talking to people, he never let
it show. He was always himself. We were
a perfect match.
When Ronnie Hill asked me out, he
informed me that I would have to drive, since his license had been partially
suspended, for driving under the influence. He told me about the events in his
recent life that had caused him, he said, to drink and drive… drive dangerously
at that, and that he was only licensed to drive to work and back home. A
mechanic without a license is usually unemployed, so he felt lucky to be
allowed to keep his job, and he wasn’t about to get caught driving at any other
time, which would cause him to have his license suspended totally. I assured
him that it was alright with me. I liked him enough to accept that he had made
a mistake, and he was paying for it, and I wasn’t going to punish him. He was
attending meetings regularly, trying to deal with his drinking problem. He
didn’t, at that time, admit that it was alcoholism, but he did admit that he
had been drinking for most of his life… probably started around age ten, and
drank even more after his brother, his closest brother and best friend, died
while they were swimming, an event that haunted him for the rest of his life.
He should have been the one who died, he kept saying. Even his mother thought
that, and voiced it in a moment of pain. She didn’t really mean it, but all
that registered in his mind was that she had said it. It devastated him.
The first night we went out, we had
a marvelous time. We had dinner and then went out to a local night spot to
dance. Ronnie Hill couldn’t dance, and he readily admitted it, but we stayed on
the dance floor because I liked to dance. The more I joked him about the way he
danced, the more he danced, just to make me laugh. Although we had a couple of
drinks, we didn’t drink much. As time went on, and we dated more, Ronnie Hill
drank more. He could handle his liquor, I supposed it was because he had been
drinking for so long and had gotten into the habit of drinking a lot. When we
were around his family, I noticed that all of them drank more than I was used
to seeing people drink. Then again, although my mother was not a drinker, she
had family members who drank, but the party always ended before anybody got too
drunk. That was the only time there was alcohol in my house. I never spent much
time around my father’s family, but I knew they drank, too. My daddy drank almost
every Friday night, but he never brought it home, except inside him, and he
came home singing and went to sleep. He had relaxed himself.
It is funny (unusual) how we, as a
society, accept the consumption of alcohol, and even alcoholics, without
condemning the drug (and alcohol is indeed a drug) or the user. It is only when
alcoholism disrupts the family that we even take notice. If an alcoholic works
every day, pays the bills, takes care of home, doesn’t fight or shoot or cut
people or beat people up… we allow them to be alcoholics, and we don’t rush
them off to treatment facilities. Calm alcoholics seldom get any treatment at
all. We simply let them be. It is only when alcoholics become abusive that we
even think twice about their illness. In the African American family, the male
(father figure) is almost expected to take a few drinks, knowing the abuse he
has to suffer, the demeaning treatment, the debasement he suffers, usually at
the hands of white employers and colleagues.
Alcohol is his release. It is quite different when women drink… there is
more of a stigma attached, but still there is no real condemnation. If she
drinks too much, she is described as being sick, and it is acceptable for her
to get help. Still alcohol is acceptable. Alcohol is a social drug, and there
are even parents who give it to their kids without thinking about any later
effects. Everybody drinks.
